The Lord’s Prayer in Portuguese:
Pai nosso, que estais no céu
Santificado seja o Vosso nome,
Venha a nós o Vosso reino,
Seja feita a Vossa vontade,
Assim na terra como no céu.
O pão nosso de cada dia nos dai hoje.
Perdoai as nossas ofensas,
Assim como nós perdoamos a quem nos tem ofendido.
E não nos deixeis cair em tentação,
Mas livrai-nos do mal,
Amém.
Portuguese (1290- ) is the main language of Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and some other bits of the old Portuguese empire. More people speak Portuguese than French, but not as many as speak Spanish. It is spoken by half of all Latin Americans and by more Africans than Europeans.
Portuguese is like Spanish, but it has sh and zh sounds, more z and oy sounds and, like French, is partly spoken through the nose. The spelling is also different. But if you know one, the other is easy to learn: many of the words are the same in both. Some people who speak Portuguese can understand spoken Spanish, but it does not work the other way round.
They both come from Latin. If history had been a bit different, they might have been one language.
Some see Galician of north-western Spain as a dialect of Portuguese. That is a matter of debate: while those in northern Portugal can understand it, those in the south have trouble.
What is certain is that they both came from the same language in the Middle Ages: Galician-Portuguese. It was the language of choice for poets in the 1200s and 1300s, even in the court of the Spanish king. But later Galicia fell under Spanish rule while Portugal had its own kings who made Portuguese a language of learning.
The main dialects of Portuguese are those of Portugal, Africa and Brazil. African and European Portuguese are closer to each other than either is to Brazilian Portuguese.
Africa: Portuguese has taken root in Angola. It is not merely the language of those at the top with good educations – like, say, English in Pakistan. It has become the native language of a third of Angolans and is understood by most of them. It has also taken root in Sao Tome and Principe. It is also widely understood in Mozambique, though less than one in ten speak it as a native language. Portuguese is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
Brazil: While the written language that everyone learns in school is close to that of Portugal, the Portuguese that you hear in the street is almost another language.
The Portuguese in Europe can understand spoken Brazilian Portuguese because they are used to hearing it in television shows and songs from Brazil. But some Brazilians have a hard time understanding Portuguese the way it is spoken in Europe.
Countries with a million or more Portuguese speakers:
186m: Brazil
11m: Portugal
9m: Angola
8m: Mozambique
2m: America
2m: Germany
1m: France
1m: South Africa
Some would add the 4 million Galicians to this list.
– Abagond, 2007.
See also:
- The Wikipedia in Portuguese
- Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa – an online Portuguese-to-Portuguese dictionary
- Latin
- Galician
- Spanish
- French
- Portuguese empire
- countries:
It takes me close to a day of being around speakers of Peninsular Portuguese before I can understand them.
I’d say the difference between Peninsular Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese is on the order of the difference between the Queen’s English and Jamaican patois.
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Come on… the difference between Portuguese in Portugal and Portuguese in Brazil is like English in Britain versus English in North America, not like that between the Queen’s English and Jamaican patois.
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Emilia, most Brazilians I know get totally discombobulated their first day or so in Lisbon, before the language starts really setting in.
That’s not the case with Yanks in London.
I worked for a publishing house for several years and we had constant complaints regarding the Portuguese of our books imported from Portugal. I’ve never seen that problem raise its head in an American publishing house with books from England.
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Well, they did complain about several words in “Harry Potter”. They even changed the title (granted, not because they were unable to understand it).
Thanks to many telenovelas, I can understand some Brazilian Portuguese when I hear it. On the other hand, I understand none of the Portugal. I never thought about it. I honestly thought language is more or less the same.
I mean, not that I watch telenovelas, no way… It’s just they were everywhere at one point.
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So knowing Spanish can help a persons Portuguese? That is good to hear I’m learning Spanish.
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I once read a theory that the original Portuguese is the one spoken in the NE of Brazil. Elsewhere in Brazil it was influenced by Tupi, and african and european languages, while in Europe there was a “wrathful divergence” during the períod (1580-1630, sort of) when Spain anschlussed Portugal
BTW, one of the most interesting influences now in Portuguese comes via Angola with roots from african native languages
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Also, this version of the Lord’s prayer is the Roman Catholic version. It uses the now archaic pronoun “vós” (2nd person plural) for God
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The Northeast of Brazil has the highest concentration of African descent people.
Hmm.
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In fact, every human being is african descent. And 90% or more brazilians descend from african slaves. The NE is the place with the higher concentration of darker skinned people, but this is no indication that they are more african than european or american. I think one study that averaged the DNA of brazilians came to the amazing conclusion that it was nearly even between Afr/Eur/Am
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Correction: the 33/33/33 perfect mix is the SE mix
https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composi%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%C3%A9tnica_do_Brasil
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Correction of the correction: 33/33/33 os the Y-DNA of whites in the SE
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